Making Virtualization Tools More Affordable

When it comes to virtualization, there always seems to be a chicken-and-egg problem. No one seems to be quite sure if the reason we're seeing IT organizations stall at around the 40 percent mark when it comes to deploying virtual servers is because of the nature of the application workloads or simply the fact that they don't have the tools they need to manage that many virtual servers.

The latter of these two issues is tied fairly close to the cost of the tools needed to manage virtual servers. A lot of IT organizations simply don't have the funding to acquire these tools, which is why it may be worth watching what SolarWinds is up to with the release of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager, which is based on the Hyper9 virtualization management platform that SolarWinds acquired early this year.

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager, which comes with a 'time-travel' capability that allows IT organizations to track historical performance and model dependencies, is priced at $2,995. In addition, the tool can be integrated with the company's Storage Manager software to optimize the overall virtual storage environment.

According to Bob Quillen, SolarWinds senior director of product marketing, SolarWinds is once again trying to provide 90 percent of the functionality of an enterprise-class management tool at 10 percent of the cost. That's a particularly significant issue in the world of virtual servers because if the tools are more affordable, it should lead to less stall when it comes to virtualization adoption.